An emerging area of interest in the field of computer networking is the “Internet of Things” (IoT), which may be used by those in the art to refer to uniquely identifiable objects/things and their virtual representations in a network-based architecture. In particular, the next frontier in the evolution of the Internet is the ability to connect more than just computers and communications devices, but rather the ability to connect “objects” in general, such as lights, appliances, vehicles, window shades and blinds, doors, locks, etc.
As more non-traditional devices join the IoT, networks may eventually evolve from a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) model to a model that enables bring-your-own-thing (BYOT), bring-your-own-interface (BYOI), and/or bring-your-own-service (BYOS) paradigms. In other words, as the IoT grows, the number of available services, etc., will also grow considerably. For example, a single person in the future may transport sensor-equipped clothing, other portable electronic devices (e.g., cell phones, etc.), cameras, pedometers, or the like, into an enterprise environment, each of which may attempt to access the wealth of new IoT services that are available on the network.
Additionally, the number of interfaces and protocols supported by IoT devices is rapidly increasing, making the attack surface ever-growing and generally uncontrolled as there is very little knowledge ad-hoc for majority of them. For instance, environments built to protect Enterprise networks from conventional devices will be challenged to similarly work for IoT devices. For example, people will be using devices, sensor-equipped clothes, shoes, cameras, pedometers, and so forth in the enterprise environment, associating their devices with non-authorized services in an unfettered way. This will create a wealth of new services which will become a difficult security challenge to manage.